What a settling day actually does

We have turned away more boarding bookings over the settling day than over any other rule, including the vaccination one. People are leaving on Friday, the dog has never been here, and they want to know why a day in advance matters so much that we would rather lose the work.

Here is the honest answer: it is not really for the dog’s benefit on the day. It is for the dog’s benefit at nine o’clock on the second night.

The second night

First nights are usually fine. The dog is tired, overstimulated, and sleeps through confusion. The second night is when it works out that this is not a long afternoon, that you are not behind the next door, and that the routine it has been running on has been replaced by a different one.

A dog that has done a settling day meets that realisation with a room it has already slept in, a smell it recognises, and two people it walked with three weeks ago. A dog that hasn’t meets it with nothing.

What the day actually contains

Arrival at eight, the same door, the same hallway. Upstairs to the room it will have. Breakfast at its own time, from its own container. A walk on the Row with whoever will be walking it in June. The middle of the day in the front room. The afternoon walk. Home at five.

Nothing dramatic. The point is that every single thing in that list will be identical when it comes back for real, down to which person clips the lead on.

The exception we do make

One: a dog we have groomed regularly for a year or more, whose household we know, can do a half-day instead. It is the same routine compressed, and it is enough because the building is already familiar.

We have never made an exception for a first-timer, and the two occasions I nearly did still bother me. Both were nice families in a genuine bind. Both would have put an unprepared dog in a strange room the night their people left the country, and there is no version of us saying yes to that which ends better than the version where we say no and give them the number of a good sitter.